There is now some suggestion that these houses be sold and the families moved to regular low-income housing, and apparently there is opposition to this plan.

To this I ask... what do we owe these people? Why should they be living in better places than I am when I'm working for a living and earning my keep?

To quote Margaret Greaves:

"I'm uncomfortable with the idea of low-income people only living in areas where the housing costs less,'' she says.

How does that make any sense? Of COURSE low income people live where the housing costs less. They have low incomes! That's all they can afford!

I'm sure I'd be perfectly happy living in a house on the Bridal Path, but as it turns out, I can't afford it. So I don't live there.

Professor Ernie Lightman says this:

"If the goal is to let people live as normally as possible, then it's clear the more integrated a community the better,'' he says, noting that, like Allen, most people wouldn't have been aware the families on Ellerbeck St. were in social housing.

Is that our goal? Are we trying to put poor people on easy street, living off the backs of the rest of us? I would have thought the goal would be to give them the bare necessities required to live and the opportunity to better their situations through hard work and a little ambition.

Now I know that our social programs fail in that respect in many places, but that's not the topic of discussion here.

That being the case though, shouldn't these properties be sold and the money spent toward helping all the poor, rather than putting up a select few in tax-funded luxury homes?

Wouldn't the money be better spent improving the schools and community programmes in poor ares so poor tax-leaching kids have a better chance at growing up to be something other than poor tax-leaching adults?

I'd be curious to know how long the people who live in these places have been there.

At the very least, give them a 5 year term and then kick them back to the projects. That way, we can give them a taste of the good life with the opportunity to improve themselves and then, if they don't take advantage of it, we can give the same shot to someone else.

Otherwise, what motivation is there for these people to go off on their own? If they earn a living but can then only afford a low-rent apartment, why would they ever move?

Has anyone else had enough of our mayor trying to hurt us just to make a point?

It seems like every time he tries to cut out some service the people of the city find valuable, his efforts are failing miserably.

Doesn't he think he should at least make sure such things are going to save the city money before he goes pulling the plug on them?

It seems to me that his efforts in the long run are actually going to cost us more rather than providing any savings.

All this, just so he can get the people to warm up to the new taxes he wants to stick us with.

I'm sure I'm not the only one looking forward to the next municipal elections so we can vote this idiot out.

The least he could do is let some independant auditors in to point out to us exactly where he's wasting all our money!

So why doesn't he? I can only imagine what they might find. My guess is that he's got something going on to line his pockets so thoroughly that it is worth committing political suicide for, and that he really needs the extra tax dollars to complete the process.

Here's hoping he doesn't get it. Slimy used-car-salesman-looking bastard that he is.

The latest polls are showing that the "We don't support faith-based education... unless it's Catholic" Liberals are gearing to win a majority in tomorrow's election.

This can only mean that the people of this province are hoping for more of the same. More lies. More tax increases. More theft and misappropriation of our money.

I pray we don't get that... but it would appear that the people have made up their minds and rather than educating themselves, they're listening to the propaganda and fearing all their money will back radical terrorism-generating crazy-schools or something.

Whoever is running John Tory's campaign should be immediately fired and for God's sake, someone show the man how to tie a damned tie.

I'll cast my vote tomorrow with faint hope for something better. Maybe we'll see a miracle. One can hope, right?

There's an interesting referendum being slipped onto our provincial election ballots on October 10th and I'm sincerely begging the population to reject it.

The issue at hand affects the very roots of our political system here in Ontario. We're being asked whether we'd like to continue with the current system, which is admittedly far from perfect, or to choose a new alternative called the Mixed-Member Proportional system, or MMP.

I've seen some deceptive propaganda on TV lately trying to convince people to vote for it, and while I don't know who's behind the ads, you can be sure that they'll stand to benefit personally in some way from the new system and that you, as a voter, will not.

The compelling argument seems to be that this new system will allow you to vote for the person you deem "best for the job" regardless of what political party they belong to. This is absolutely not the case and I will explain why.

Firstly, if the person that you think would best represent you in government is representing a party that you believe should not hold power, then they are clearly not the best person for you. This should go without saying. If you don't want the lying, stealing Liberals in power, then don't vote Liberal.

With that in mind, this argument must imply that voting for someone other than one of the parties you don't like might hold some benefit for you. This is also not the case. The only time there could be a benefit to voting for someone other than the representative of the party you want in power under the new system would be if that person were running as an independant.

Lo and behold though, this is also exactly the case with our current system. If the best person for the job is an independant candidate, then everyone benefits from voting for them, and should do so. They will get elected and best represent the interests of your constituency. Nothing changes in this respect.

On the flip side, however, what the MMP system is going to do is effectively eliminate the protest vote. If you choose to exercise your rights as a citizen and vote, but do not want to vote for a major party and don't have an independant candidate worth voting for, you will no longer be able to vote for some fringe party as a way to get their numbers in the results and show disdain for the leading candidates.

Why not?

In the new system, if you do so then members of that party might actually get seats in parliament, and not even necessarily the member that you voted for!

For example, in the last Ontario election, I voted for the Green Party because both the Ontario Liberals and the Ontario Progressive Conservative party were proving to be idiots. Of course, I didn't actually want any of those crackpot tree-huggers to get a seat in parliament, but I wanted my vote counted for something other than the Liberals or PC's.

Under the new system, my vote would be counted as endorsing the Green Party and with enough of them, they'd get people in parliament even though not a single member got elected. They'd just get to pick whoever they'd like and put that person in a seat of power.

Is that what we want happening?

The propaganda on TV is hinting at the idea of directly electing someone you favour, regardless of party, implying that we might have something similar to the United States where they independantly elect their state governers. This couldn't be further from the truth. Anyone that gets into government as a result of this new system would have no real power as they'd be a minority among minority parties. They'd simply be taking up space and collecting taxpayer money for no benefit to the public. We'd have 22 more politicians to pay out of our pockets, along with their staff of political gold-diggers, with nothing to show for it except one less option when voting.

How is this good for the people of Ontario? It's not. But it's certainly good for the wannabe politicians who are going to land high-paying jobs and cushy benefits because of it.

Please don't let this happen. Join me on October 10th and vote no to MMP. Some electoral reform might be good for us, but not with this proposal.

There's an interesting article in the Star today talking about the Ontario Liberal Party cheating the election system by having what are essentially fake lobby groups do advertising on their behalf.

I think the real story however is in the money that's changing hands in the process.

I read most of the article to mean "These guys gave thousands to the Liberal Party, who turned around and gave millions back to them from the taxpayers pockets".

That's huge bundles of our money being used to reward people for giving much less money to the Liberal Party. At the end of the day, the Liberal Party is giving millions of dollars to their friends and keeping a good chunk of it for themselves. Here's just a small example:

Coalition chair Gary O'Neill, who is on vacation and couldn't be reached, is also president of International Union Of Operating Engineers Local 793, which held a Liberal fundraiser at the union hall attended by McGuinty on June 22, 2006. Local 793 has donated $66,389 to the Liberals between 2003 and 2006. Two months ago, the government gave Local 793 a $1.98 million grant for its training centre.

It sounds like misappropriation to me. I can't help but be reminded of all the stealing Jean Cretien and Paul Martin were doing just recently. Like father like son? I guess it's "like federal, like provincial".